


We Kiss the Dusk Goodnight

by warmommy



Series: If We're Gonna Die, Bury Us Alive [1]
Category: Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Nazi Torture, Nazis, Past Child Abuse, Psychological Torture, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-03-07 06:12:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13428510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmommy/pseuds/warmommy
Summary: This is very, very, very dark. Some deep, dark parts of the human psyche will be blown wide the fuck open. There will be mentions of rape, actual rape, physical, psychological, and emotional torture.This isn’t without purpose or proper context. The reader is an agent of the OSS and has been captured and taken to the same facility where Hugo Stiglitz is being held prior to transfer to Berlin for execution. First and foremost, this story is, at least in my opinion, and I hope yours, about the beauty of two human souls surviving some of the most despicable depths of human cruelty for and through one another. First and foremost, this is about love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find this and a lot more at my tumblr, warmommy.tumblr.com!

He was still in Paris. Hugo Stiglitz slowly blinked himself awake and tried to ignore the burning stings across his back and the gnawing hunger at his belly. One hundred forty-seven days since his capture, and he was still in Paris. That old, familiar dripping sound somewhere far off, echoing, the one that had nearly driven him mad in his first days, was always his first indication that he had not yet been taken to Berlin.

Then the men would come. He didn’t try and fight them because of his weakened physical state, but he didn’t give them what they wanted, either. They kept him hungry, hoping he would beg. They beat him, hoping he would beg. They blasted fluorescent lamps into the room where he was held to deny him sleep for days sometimes, hoping he would beg.

Begging would do him no good, so he didn’t. He’d known once he made up his mind to begin his trail of slaughter that it would come to an end, and that this would be the end chosen for him. They would do whatever they wanted with him for a while, and, eventually, they would kill him. No amount of begging was going to save his life, and, in many ways, it wasn’t exactly a good life, to begin with, certainly not worth begging for. Hugo was no fun for them in this way, so the torture was intermittent, but often left him either unconscious or disabled, sometimes for days.

It had been an entire ten days since the last, nearly a full day since he’d last been given water, and so he sat up on his cot, waiting. In his mind, he began with the second act of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, ‘What, Lucius, ho! I cannot, by the progress of the stars, give guess how near to day…’

The act was nearly over before he heard anything other than the constant, maddening drip. He shifted on the cot, making his chains jingle like sleigh bells. They were not the usual sounds, though. Hugo furrowed his brow and leaned forth to concentrate on what he was hearing. The heavy iron doors that led outside had been unlocked, but no one had come inside yet. If he strained, he could hear some muffled ruckus outside. The doors smashed open, and three voices howled through the stale air and killed his ears, unused to loud sounds.

Two of the voices he knew, just low-level guards who spent a good bit of their time with him trying to incite him to violence for a few laughs. They had on their Intimidating Voices™, booming and fearsome and false. The interesting thing, what pumped adrenaline and excitement through him, was the third voice. Someone different. Someone new. Someone screaming, spitting nails, biting out curses so strong that he guessed at once that you were American.

“Fuck you and fuck your fuckin’ pig mother and fuck your pig-fucking sister, you uncle-sucking piece of shit. Get your goddamn hands off me before I rip off your arm and shove it up your asshole, prick!”

Erik and Hubert were struggling to keep you in their hold, something which utterly delighted Hugo to witness. They stopped right in front of his holding cell and bashed you so hard against the iron bars that Hugo rose to his feet in immediate anger and concern.

You didn’t even give a peep to indicate that you’d felt it. “Stupid goddamn Nazi fucks–”

“Stiglitz!” Erik shouted. “Tell her to stop struggling or we’ll beat her with a club like the Bear Jew!”

“You cannot speak English?” Hugo was unused to the sound of his own voice.

Hubert crushed you against the bars again, this time pressing his body into yours so that you were trapped. “Go on, Stiglitz.”

“They cannot understand your insults,” he said to you, the woman with the white bag over her head. “They want you to stop struggling or they intend to beat you.”

You began to laugh, an odd, rolling sound. “Tell 'em to bring it right the fuck on.”

He did not know what to make of this right away. “They will do it. You are not helping yourself. All they have asked for, so far, is that you stop fighting.”

“Who’re you?” You grew still and silent and Hubert moved away from you, although he grabbed a handful of your ass.

Hugo switched to German again, his lip curled with distaste. “You are Germans, not Russians. Do not lower yourselves further than you already have by taking advantage of the fact that she is female.”

“Who’re you and what are you telling them?” you repeated. You stumbled when Hubert dragged you back by the bag over your head.

Erik unlocked the rusty lock to Hugo’s cell. “Congratulations, Stiglitz. Vogel wants to see how long it’ll take you to 'lower yourelf’. Inside, Hubert. Quickly.”

Hubert shoved you and you staggered inside the cell and straight into Hugo.

He steadied you with one of his arms and narrowed his eyes at Erik. “Vogel wants to see how long it takes me to rape this woman?”

“Take the bag off her head, she’s a looker. There’s more than one cock lined up for her if you won’t do it. Tick, tock.” Hubert winked at him, and it was sickening. With laughter, the guards left. For now.

The first thing Hugo did was untie your wrists, but then your fists went flying.

He took hold of your hands very gently. “I will not hurt you. I am a prisoner, too. Do you speak German?”

“No,” you spat, like it was the most bitter thing you’d ever tasted.

That was relieving. At least you had not heard that wretched conversation. “Okay. My English is good. I’m going to let you go and take this off your head. I won’t touch you again.” Tentatively, he let go of your hands, and, when you remained still and non-combative, Hugo gently lifted the white sack from over your head and let it fall to the floor.

He wondered if he would still have found you to be so beautiful if he’d seen another woman more recently. As it stood, five months had passed since he’d seen anyone but his captors. Still, even with the dried blood under your nostril and the all the soot and dirt on you, Hugo truly believed he’d never seen so divine a creature before. How on earth had language so foul come from such a lovely set of Cupid’s bow lips? Momentarily, a sort of sneer came across you, and he realised you knew he was admiring you.

He gathered himself and held out his hand. “I am Hugo Stiglitz.”

You only looked at his outstretched hand, then back up to his face. “Y/N Baker.”

“I’m not your enemy,” Hugo told you.

“I’ll be the judge of that for myself.”

“That’s fair.”

Y/N Baker, the beauty, tilted your head, hands on your hips, and looked him up and down. “How come they put me in this cell with you? What did they tell you?”

“They told me nothing about you. I did not know you were coming.”

“Yeah, neither did they. You’re that fella that’s in here for killing all those Gestapo fuckers, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “I did that.”

You made a somewhat bemused noise and examined his face for several long seconds. “So, putting me in here with you, they expect you’re gonna do what?”

“I don’t know.”

You scoffed and turned away. “That’s a lie.”

* * *

No matter what he said, you wouldn’t respond, after that. He was quickly obsessed with taking in every detail of you, which he rationalised as a by-product of so many months in solitary confinement. He simply wanted to be close to another human being, especially a human being who was not his enemy, and you were _here_ , in this tiny cell with him. You were violent and belligerent if he came too close, but Hugo was always mere steps of inches away from you. He missed the touch of another so much that it didn’t matter that you were hitting him.

Hugo encouraged you to eat and drink when it was brought to you, and discovered that you  _would_  at least listen to reason. His mind was overtaken by whole new purposes. He didn’t need to recite Shakespeare over and over to keep his brain from turning into mush. Now, there was Y/N, the issue of protecting you, the issue of keeping you from being violated, making sure that you ate enough and drank enough, giving you a comfortable place to rest. His last few days of life were to be filled with  _Y/N_.


	2. Chapter 2

It went on this way for days, and eventually you quit resisting his attention. Eventually, you began to talk to him again in whole sentences, and then he could carry on whole, amiable conversations with you. You picked at him for something to do, but he felt it was not meant to harm, and it didn’t matter very much to him if it had been. Every bit of mental stimulation was wonderful, so that he felt irrationally joyful all the time. 

You were taken out of the cell every single day, and he paced and paced under a guard’s careful watch. The first time, you came back clean and with your minor wounds disinfected. The second, you gave him some of the cigarettes and matches they’d provided you. The third time, you came back with wet hair and freshly scrubbed skin again, and he was eternally grateful to see you, every time. 

By the seventh day, you were the most precious thing he’d ever known. Hugo refused to turn this against himself, because it felt good, and any day now it would all be over, the last light would fade, and he’d be gone from the world forever. What did it matter, then? He had no one left to impress, save you, but that was probably not possible with him fawning over your every move, so to hell with it. He sat up against the wall while you slept, looking down at you occasionally, almost always touching your arm or your shoulder. He was smoking a cigarette and running his hand gently, slowly up and down your arm when the doors opened.

There were four sets of footsteps instead of one or two. Hugo anxiously inhaled the rest of his cigarette and began to shake you by your shoulder to wake and warn you. Before he could even react, there was a man chaining him to the bench that ran along the wall, and two others were pulling you out of the cell.

That was when he realised what you were for, to them. He watched in horror as they bound you to a chair. The fourth man, one he did not know, had never seen before, was grinning as though it were a spring day.

“Greetings, Ms. Baker.” The fourth man could speak English.

“Fuck you,” you jeered.

“Hubert?”

Hugo panicked as he watched the weaselly guard strike you  _hard_  across your jaw. He twisted and pulled against his restraints. This is exactly what they had wanted, how they had designed it. They knew they’d nearly broken his mind with the lack of stimulation and contact with others. They knew that he wasn’t going to rape you, that was just a jab, an insult. They knew that he would become intensely, unreasonably attached to you. They knew that this was going to hurt him most.

The fourth man, a fucking major, gave a little laugh and pulled your chair around to make sure that you had full view of Hugo and he had full view of you. “Look at all the distress you’re causing. I only wanted to talk with you, there’s no need to be nasty.”

“You came here, tied my ass to a chair, and chained him up so he can hardly move. I think you had a little bit more than talking in mind,” you said.

“Of course, Ms. Baker. However, whenever I greet you, I expect to be greeted in turn. Let’s try again, shall we?”

“Just do it,” Hugo called out to you. He was still trying, futile, to find a weakness in his bonds. His heart was pounding away behind his ribs; it would kill him to see you being hurt again, and amidst this panic and horror was a rippling of rage.

“Hello, Ms. Baker.” The major smiled again and nudged you.

You took a deep breath, seething. “Hello, I haven’t had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

“What a polite little girl,” the major intoned. “My name is Sebastian.”

“Sebastian, how nice. What do you want?”

Sebastian ran his fingers through your hair like a lover lying next to you on plush pillows. “My, you’re pretty even with that crack to your jaw. What a lovely face, what a heavenly body…”

While Hugo became sick, you only sighed. “Come on now, Sebastian. There are better ways to waste time than this.”

“Isn’t this what you do, Ms. Baker? Isn’t that why you’re an asset? What is that delightful term that your government uses to describe what you do?”

“It’s honeypot, but if you want to find out why the US gov’ sees me as an asset, you go ahead and untie me from this chair and call your goons down.”

Sebastian chuckled. “What fire, what spark. Is this what Hugo sees in you?”

You yawned. “I s'pose he sees the same things as the rest of you. Legs, ass, tits, etc.”

“Oh? Has he tried forcing himself on you, yet? It’s an unfortunate habit of his.”

“No, it  _isn’t_.” It was a stupid, stupid idea to talk, even worse to fall right into that obvious trap, but Hugo was nearing a breaking point, and he wouldn’t be called a rapist. You had to be frightened, even if you didn’t let on about it. It was far better that they turn the focus on him, hurt him. Pain was only pain, a fact of life, one he’d borne in copious amounts. To watch you be threatened and harmed was making his head spin, his heart to seize inside him and burn, burn, burn. “My habit that is unfortunate to you is killing people exactly like you, your friends. One day, I’ll kill you myself.”

Sebastian stood straight and shook his finger at Hugo like a naughty child. Hubert and Erik acted as if on cue and started to beat the most precious thing of his life. It took a few blows, but one of them knocked a groan out of you. You weren’t screaming, though. You weren’t begging them to stop attacking you. You were almost entirely impassive.

It was Hugo that was screaming, first demanding, then pleading, begging them to stop. Sebastian snapped his fingers and the guards stopped what they were doing; you spat blood onto the cement floor.

Hugo’s chest heaved and he relaxed his grip on the iron bars somewhat. “Please, don’t do this. She cooperated with you. Whatever she’s done, put it on me, you’re all going to kill me, anyway.”

They put you back inside your cell and left without another word spoken. They’d gotten exactly what they came for.

Hugo put you back on the cot and used his sleeve to wipe blood from your lip. Overall, it seemed they’d mostly avoided your face, and that seemed rather ominous in itself. He was so angry, at himself and the guards and the major, that he almost didn’t notice your hand close around his wrist.

“They were going to find an excuse to do that no matter what you did. If you’d kept quiet or played along. It didn’t matter.”

“Well, I meant what I said,” Hugo told you. “I’m going to kill him. Slow.”

You shook your head, a smirk and a fat lip. “Hubert goes first.”

Hugo pulled your hand up to his lips and kissed it. “Whoever you point at goes first. Whoever you tell me.” Normally, you never let him touch you this way without slapping the back of his head, but you were probably tired and a bit dazed, so he took the chance to kiss your cool forehead.

“What’s wrong with you?” It was soft, not barbed and loaded. A line appeared between your brows. “Do you know? Did a doctor ever tell you?”

He shook his head. “Nothing that I know of. I’ll never know, now, if there is.”

“Well, I guess what’s wrong with you is whatever’s wrong with me.” You stretched uncomfortably. “You’re not gonna die, Stiglitz.”

“I’m not concerned about that right now.”

There it was, a light strike with the edge of your hand against his face. “Don’t be stupid, I don’t like stupid people. Don’t pretend like you care more about a stranger than you do your own chances of survival. It doesn’t matter how pretty you think I am.”

“Is that a strong enough word? I thought that there was a graduated scale of loveliness, and pretty is only just remarkable or distinctive. You know that you’re not only pretty.” Hugo lay his head next to yours, though it was an odd angle, and gripped your hand. “And it wouldn’t matter if you were the plainest woman alive. You’re strong, brave, and vicious. He thinks he’s in control, but really, it’s you. They’re afraid of you, or they wouldn’t tie you up. They’re afraid of me, too, and they should be, because they came between me and Y/N Baker.”

You glanced at him sideways. “When we get out of here, they’ll all be terrified, you know.”

He smiled. “They won’t live long enough to feel fear.”

“Not  _them_ ,” you whispered. “All the others, elsewhere. They’ll find out what we’ve done, what pile of ash and bone we left behind, and they’ll live in constant terror.”

With your cut lip and bloodthirsty smile, he’d never seen anything lovelier in his life.

They ramped it up, after that. Hugo thrashed against chains and bars while you were punished in his stead. Every day, you told him not to blame himself, that they stood to gain a lot of knowledge from you, if you gave it up, and nothing to gain from him.

“They’re not doing it  _all_  just to get to you.” You rolled your eyes and shoved him away, or tried. “Quit stroking your ego.”

You did that to stop him from blaming himself, he knew. Or, he chose to believe. Mostly, you still acted like you couldn’t stand him, but that was all right. That was livable. You were still  _there_. If they kept going at this rate, though, you wouldn’t be there anymore. The bruises on your arms, on your chest, were swollen and gruesome. There were fingerprints on your skin, and it made Hugo’s hands tremble with a rage that built inside him that was truly frightening. You were still talking, and while he’d normally listen to every single word, it all seemed to be coming from underground.

“I don’t know how to protect you.” His voice didn’t sound like his voice.

Your laugh also didn’t sound sincere. “You should fix your mind on other things. When’s the last time you slept?”

Hugo shrugged. “What does it matter?”

“What have I told you?” You smacked him weakly.

“I  _do_  care more about you than me.”

You sighed and placed your hand over your face. “You can’t say bullshit like that to me.”

“It’s true.”

You grabbed hold of his chains without looking at him again. “You know what you’re going to have to do, don’t you?”

After a few moments, it sunk in that every word you’d said just then was spoken in perfect German. The accent was there, but…

“You told me you couldn’t speak German.”

You scoffed. “Yes, my superiors sent me right into Nazi territory by myself, unable to speak German. I thought you were smarter than that.”

“I believe what you tell me,” he said slowly in his native language. He looked down where your hand was still wrapped around the chain. “That’s why you were angry with me when you first came here. I wouldn’t tell you what they wanted me to do to you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you snapped. “You’ll still have to do it.”

Hugo pushed your hand away and forced you to look at him. “Do you remember what I said to them?”

“In English,” you whispered. “They listen.”

“I can’t do that,” Hugo insisted. “You can tell them that I did all you want, but that’s not, I couldn’t–”

You sat up now, facing him angrily. “Listen to me, goddamn it. I’ve been getting the shit kicked out of me for days, and, yes, I understand what they’ve said. I don’t think they’re saying it just to rile you up, I think Germans are the lowest of the low and I think that’s exactly what they’re planning on doing so long as I’m not talking.  _But_ , this Vogel, he’s a crazy goddamn sadist, and he gets off on those two morons hitting me, but what he  _really_  loves is your whole fucking parade of outrage and whatnot. They’re keeping me clean, fed, and they won’t touch my face. You get to pick, they gave  _you_  the choice, not me. At least if you’re fucking me, that buys me some time.”

“Time for  _what_?” His heart was pounding away again, but his rational mind understood what you said as absolute truth.

You exhaled heavily, glaring at him. “It buys me time with one dick in me instead of a train of dicks. Do you want a train full of dicks in me?”

“Of course I don’t!” Hugo grabbed your hands without thinking, but you didn’t pull away. “There’s a difference between having sex with you and raping you, for God’s sake, Y/N.”

“Then you’ll just have to make it seem as unpleasant as it really is,” you said dryly. Then you closed your eyes and sighed a bit. “That was a bit shitty of me. I know you’re upset about it, Hugo. No one is calling this the ideal situation, but they’ll get some kicks out of it for at least a while, and during that while, it’ll be just you, yeah? They might even let up on knocking me around. You want me, right?”

“I don’t want you screaming and begging me to stop,” he hissed. “I couldn’t.”

“I’m not going to. I barely make a sound whenever they get their hands on me, I doubt they’re expecting me to be very…vocal.” You looked to the ground as you lit a cigarette. “Listen, it’s wonderful that you’re the sort of man who’s not turned on by hurting women, it really is, but it’s not going to do either of us any good. They’ll fuck me, one by one, right in front of you, and they won’t be pretending, and it  _will_  hurt, and your mind will probably completely shatter at that point. I don’t want to deal with being raped, and I don’t want to deal with liquified Stiglitz brain.”

“I don’t know what you’re proposing that I do to you. How are they supposed to know what’s going on if you aren’t making noise? I can’t believe I am even talking about this with you.”

“Right, so this won’t make you happy either, but you’re going to have to fuck up my face.”

Hugo blinked heavily. “What?”

You grabbed his hand and held it to your chest. “Give me a black eye and a fat lip before they come to us tomorrow. They’ll know it wasn’t them.”

“How could I ever hit you?” He hissed dubiously.

“You are a  _killer_.”

“Yes, people who deserved to be killed!”

“I’ll go ahead and spoil something for you: I deserve to be hit.”

“No.”

“Yes. I do. I’ve done plenty of bad things, plenty of bad things  _to_  other people, and I’ll hit you back. Defensive wounds.”

Hugo took several deep breaths, his hands covering his eyes. All the world was swimming around him, and that damn drip…“Tell me that I’m not doing something wrong.”

“I’ll make it worth your time.” You sat down in his lap and kissed along his jaw, holding your cigarette out to him.

The drag of your lips across his skin evoked too strong a reaction. He was frozen, the cigarette fell to the ground and the cherry slowly faded to nothing. Maybe it wasn’t right, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t make you stop. It was far, far too powerful, this intimate touch on hard, neglected skin from a woman he would kill and die for.

It was just like you said. The next day, with your black eye and swollen lip, the jeering began, but they did not take you out of the cell. You remained curled up at one end of the bench, staring numbly at the cement floor, and Hugo regarded them hard. The scratches to his face still stung. He was congratulated, applauded. They said things to you to try and get you out of your hardly even blinking state, but, when they couldn’t, they just went back to thanking Hugo for doing their jobs for them.

Sebastian was last to leave the holding cells, hands behind his back, casting a smirk in his direction. When the iron doors banged shut and the locks turned and clicked, you broke easily from your reverie and crossed the room. Curiously, you began talking to him. Actually talking to him, a real conversation that had nothing to do with rape or guards or imprisonment.

That night, you were next to him, your arm thrown across his chest in your sleep, but Hugo could hardly close his eyes. What had happened that made her this way? What horrible things had been done, and when, that created a woman nonplussed to every aspect of the sanctity of her mind and body? How could he prevent these things from ever happening again?

They didn’t take you away again for three more days, but Hugo was still nearly sick in anticipation of what they were doing to you in this time. You came back wearing the same blanked and unchanging expression that you always had when they were around, now, with a fresh set of clothes hugging your body and a basket of food over your arm.

It was a dress. A white dress that touched just below your knees.

You convinced him to let them ‘catch them in the act’, wearing that white dress. You were holding the bars you were pressed against and he whispered to you that you were his and precious and that he loved you until the footsteps grew too near. Then, as you’d suggested to him before, Hugo forced his mind blank, did not hear their words, only the distant sounds of their voices. He thought of nothing, felt nothing but how beautiful you were and felt all around him.

You became softer at all times to make it easier for  _him_  to cope with what was going on. You never yelled anymore, never struck him, were quite indulgent. With a piece of chalk, you both played tic-tac-toe for hours and hours, talking in low and soft voices all the while. Slowly, he had the story of how you had been captured by the Germans, and he told you his own. He told you an extremely condensed version of his childhood, how he’d searched for his parents after his release from government care. You told him about standing at the shore of the same lake every year from the time you were four until you left for Europe.

“I regret nothing,” you said one night. Hesitantly, you placed your hand on his knee. “I regret  _nothing_ , Stiglitz. Understand?”

Equally hesitant, he nodded. He did not understand, but he didn’t have to. Within seconds, you had thrown yourself into his arms, and he held you there for a long, long time. That was how he understood you, or, how he came to understand you. Your words were not affectionate.

“You won’t believe me,” he began, unsure of how his sentence would even finish. His fingertips raced over the notches of your spine. Your eyelashes closed and opened against the hollow of his throat. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, you’re safe with me. You said that what I am doing is keeping you safe, so no matter how much I hate it, I’ll keep doing it. Whatever it takes, always, I won’t let anyone hurt you, and you are safe with me. Do you understand that?”

“One day, you’re going to walk out of this prison.” You played with the collar of his shirt. “I won’t let you get far without me.”


	3. Chapter 3

Day thirty-nine. You awoke sniffling, shivering from the cold, for there was no one next to you. They’d taken him again, while you were sleeping. The white dress they’d given you, calling you the Traitor’s Bride, did not cover much of you, and the fabric was thin. The winter had taken a turn for the worse.

You searched within your mind for a purpose to getting out of the cot, but there wasn’t one. Not within your reach. You closed your eyes again and rolled toward the space Hugo normally occupied, your fingers tracing the wrinkles in the stained fabric where he had been. There was the shape of him, somewhere. There was the scent of his skin.

Was it going to be today? Would he ever come back again?

What had you said to him last?

You began to see shooting stars behind your eyes from the force with which you held them shut. Something unpleasant, surely. Whenever it came time to forgive him for being German, there was always something to hold you back, and so you were weaving constant strings of insults and strangling the neck of a man who at least believed that he loved you. It didn’t feel any better.

Tears wet your eyelashes, but you still did not bother to open your eyes or to rise. There was not enough liquid in your body for true crying to be possible; whatever dry, impotent sorrow came was lost where you were.

There was no hope in rescue anymore. You’d held out for weeks, but you were of the pessimistic sort, anyway. It had either been deemed an unimportant task, an endeavour too risky, or you were considered to be dead already.

Surely, it wouldn’t take too much longer. Surely, there couldn’t be much more. Surely, Vogel grew bored, or perhaps his superiors exasperated with his little games.

“Do you miss your husband?” Erik sneered when he brought you water. You pretended not to understand.

Without Hugo there, without the regular routines, keeping company only with the slow, persistent drip, time became distorted. They visited you, they left. You woke, you slept, you woke. Occasionally, you ate. Five times, they took you and sprayed you down with freezing water to sluice away the dirt and all the other things you did not want to think about.

“Did he get sent to Berlin?” you asked, Hubert panting harshly above you.

The next thrust of his hips was so hard and sharp that you cried out, sharp and hoarse, and a pinching sensation remained with you even after he was done.

Oh, well. Better he be dead than still in this place. That remarkable German had managed to survive for so long. He took the beatings and maimings, let them starve him, everything, with nothing but his memory of Shakespeare as a companion, the words of the Bard constant on his lips.

You, however, trained to survive, evade, resist, and escape, were ready for that light to go out after little more than a month.

With Erik, you couldn’t breathe; he kept his hand wrapped tight around your throat and watched your eyes closely, only allowing a bit of agonising breaths just before you passed out before beginning the whole thing over again.

“You get even tighter,” he said in your ear. “When I go home and I fuck my wife, it’s this pussy I’m thinking about, and those dark bruises all around your neck…”

Hubert’s boots were crushing your hands as he took in the whole damn thing, watching from above. “I think she likes it.”

They fed you after, they always did, it had to come before food would be given. You sat up gingerly and cast a look at your bruised hands. Swollen, but nothing distended or broken.

“Wagner, Fischer. Take him into the cell and lock him to the bars. You’ll have to unlock him from the outside, or he’ll rip you to shreds.”

Vogel’s voice startled you, for you hadn’t known he’d come along this time. You moved too quickly, put too much strain on your hips, but it was his words that truly gave you pause. It took a long second for your eyes to process what you were seeing.

Hugo, dried blood and fresh painting his chest, was tied and shackled and gagged–they’d spared no bit of metal or cleverness in restraining him, and that was when it sunk in that he had seen it. All of it. He was unable to make a move, to make a sound, but, as they ushered him back into the cell, you could  _see_  something in his eyes that must have been there when he plunged his knife into the faces of those Gestapo officers. You smiled. For the first time since your thirty-eighth day, you smiled.

Then, your body folded in half. You were quaking all over, and far too weak to fight anymore, not even your own wretched tears, not even in front of this terrible company of the cruelest men. You cried for him, for Hugo, for all the blood that had had time to dry and congeal on his body, and all the new that had to have come from today. You cried for what he must have felt when he watched what Hubert and Erik had done, after you had promised him that he was able to keep them at bay by pretending.

You cried for yourself, at last, the final string snapped. You were no longer an agent of OSS. No one was coming for you. Every day until your last, these would be the faces that you saw, these would be the things that you endured. Vaguely, you became aware of what they had always wanted for you to see in Hugo Stiglitz. He attacked them all through the bars, shoving himself against them, snarling, clawing like a wild beast. The sounds he made, they were not human.

You knew now, more than ever, that you never could have stood a chance against him–and that was what they had  _wanted_. They locked you in a cage with a man who had only ever suffered at the hands of others, whose only idea of love was what you held just out of his reach, every single day. The horrific clash of his body against the iron bars containing you both did not cease or even decrease in frequency or severity once the laughter and light had faded, and you were alone.

He could have done things to you that these Nazis never in all their demented lives would have even imagined. He had nothing to gain, nothing to lose. He could’ve overpowered you, raped you, tortured you, killed you.

But he didn’t, never came close. His instincts were of kindness, although he had never been shown it in his life, not even by you. His instincts were to balk at Erik and Hubert when he learned what was expected of him, and to refuse to disclose it to you, to save you from fear. Hugo had given you so much of what was left of him, and you hit him, said degrading things.

Hugo Stiglitz had protected you in every way that he possibly could, and felt guilty for all the ways that he could not, however out of reach that they were.

Did it matter if his love was hopeless and defeated before it even begun? It was  _love_ , existing, thrumming, thriving at the end of the world, where all things withered and died.

“Hugo.” You wiped your eyes and tried your best to stand. “You’ll tear yourself to pieces. Hugo, stop, please. They’re gone, they can’t hurt me if they are not here.” Your footing failed you. One of them had managed to bruise your cervix and the shooting pain of it shocked you so that you tripped back against the bench. “I’m sorry. Christ, Hugo, I’m sorry. Sit down, sit down.”

The clash of metal on metal rang out violently, three more strikes, and then it stopped. His dyspnea, the deep, arrhythmic constriction of his diaphragm, was causing even your head to spin. He still did not speak, so you leaned back against the cold stone wall. “How long have you been gone? What day is this?”

You could read so much in the long lines that seemed painted on his face. You only wished that you couldn’t, your eyes fleeing, your hands folding together painfully in your lap.

“Three weeks,” he rasped eventually. “Twenty-one full days.”

“Then that makes today my sixty-first.” Between the pain, the hunger, and the surprise, your head lulled. “That shouldn’t have happened to you.”

“You were raped before you ever came here, weren’t you?” His weight thudded beside you on the bench. “I can’t think of anything else that would make you more concerned about  _my_  reaction than your own. It happened to you, not to me. I…” His body canted back and forth, and his hands extended uncertainly, questioning if it was okay. When you leaned towards him, his arms snatched you hard and close, like a predator finally catching its prey.

Hugo didn’t stop rocking, tucked his face against your shoulder so that  _layers_  of his blood clung to your filthy white dress. The fabric stuck to his skin, in some places. It wasn’t surprising to hear the hard animal of his body gasp unearthly sounds that amounted to misery, mourning, and an obsessive furor.

You closed your eyes and kissed his hair, and, finding that your lips touched a rough patch where blood had dried, tried to find a place where there was just short, dark blond strands. “I’m so happy that you didn’t die. I thought you were gone to Berlin.”

“I heard you ask him.” Hugo stroked your back. It was probably supposed to be comforting. “Y/N, they did it because I wasn’t here to stop them. I’m here, I’m here, they won’t–”

“Don’t blame yourself, it’s bullshit. I told you a long time ago that they were always going to do it, that we just staved it off for a while.”

“For how long?”

“What?”

“This wasn’t the first. I know it wasn’t.”

“Listen,” you pulled back and looked at his reddened and tear-streaked face. “Do you know where we are?” He nodded. “You’ve been here a lot longer than me, too, you know that this is–this is, ah, fuck, I don’t know how to say this to you. You already know what I’m going to say, you’ve already accepted it for yourself, but you really need to accept it for me, too–”

“No!” he shouted.

“Hugo.” You held his face in your hands, your thumb stroking along his cheekbone. Salt tears, bitter blood, and dark earth mixed like oil paint, a turbulent, van Gogh-esque swirl. You looked at it longingly, your heart sparking for this last trace of art your eyes would ever see. His fingertips pawed at your knee, softly demanding your attention. You swallowed and kissed each of his eyelids. “One day, you’re going to breathe in fresh air again. They’ll take you to Berlin, and then, it’ll finally just all be over. But you’ll see the sun. Maybe even the moon, the stars…”

“You will,” he insisted. “They’ll fuck up, and when they do–”

“We still wouldn’t ever be healthy or strong enough to make our way out of here alive,” you whispered soothingly, like a mother to her child. “One day, you’ll see those things one more time, and I am  _so_  happy that you will, because you deserve to.” Your sinuses burned as your voice grew thick with emotion. You tried to blink your way through it. “I don’t want them to take you, but they will. Shit.” You sniffled and looked up. “I’m going to die here, in the dark, and that’s just the way that it is. My one regret is that I didn’t get to kill more of them before I was caught.”

“Me, too.” Hugo raked his fingers through your hair. “I love you so much, Y/N. I don’t accept any of this, I won’t fucking let them. I don’t care what I have to do.”

“I love you.” God, you weren’t even sure if it was true or if it was just pure gratefulness that this man of monstrous reputation and stature had always tried to help and not hurt you. You were sure, however, that Hugo Stiglitz was the last thing left for you to love, and, with that thought, your heart jumped and freed itself a little more. With one last trembling, burning breath, you touched your forehead to his shoulder, tacky with blood. You kissed him there, not even minding. He was rooted in place, unmoving. “Hugo, I love you.”

From then, all throughout that day and night, he said little, but would not allow you out of his arms for more than mere seconds or minutes at a time. He asked you to repeat the words again and again, in a voice that seemed to come from a place much deeper than his throat.

He was rooting himself to you, now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The epigraph for this chapter is from Buddy Wakefield’s poem, “We Were Emergencies”:
> 
> I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hated myself  
> Make love to me  
> Like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did  
> Go slow  
> I’m new to this  
> But I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop  
> Without jumping  
> I have realized that the moon  
> Did not have to be full for us to love it  
> That we are not tragedies  
> Stranded here beneath it
> 
> tw: mentions of rape, actual rape, past child abuse, physical, psychological, and emotional torture.

**78 Days Since Your Own Capture**

Hugo began to grow anxious, jumpy. Someone new was bringing food and water to the cell, and they were doing it multiple times per day. Adding to that, the wounds on his back and chest were healed, and he had not seen hide nor hair of Vogel, Erik, or Hubert since he’d been brought back. Each time the new guard brought things--including piles of cigarettes and warmer clothes for you to wear--Hugo stood by the door, as close as they would allow him, and he convinced you to stay at the very back of the cell, in the opposite corner.

You were back there reading a magazine when he brought what he guessed was chicken over to you. The sweater you wore looked far too large, as did the trousers. His heart was aching for how you’d grown thinner. He heard the slick pages shut and you pushed the magazine away, looking up at him with soft, round eyes. “Again?”

He laughed. “Yes, again. You should be eating more than this, anyway.”

* * *

 

“What do you think it means?” you asked, sidling next to him and sipping the water.

“It means ‘don’t think about it’.”

“I haven’t been hungry for days, I’m not arguing,” you smiled at him. “Just wondering why. There’s got to be something terrible just around the corner, right?”

Now he shrugged, a spoonful of rice in his mouth. “Probably, but the stronger I get, the more likely they will die when I pull their tongues out of their assholes and hang them from the ceiling by it.”

It was your turn to laugh. “What lively dinner conversation! Or breakfast. Whatever time this is. This doesn’t taste like anything. I  _miss_  cooking.”

Hugo lifted his brows. It wasn’t often you really spoke about times  _before_. “Oh ja?”

You nodded enthusiastically. “It’s one of my favourite things to do. Well, was. My parents are dead, but I have brothers, and I used to try and get us all together to eat every few weeks. We were all busy, though.”

“Busy?”

“You know. Business and such.”

That was his cue that you wouldn’t say another word of it, so he went on eating and looking at you. “I can’t cook. When I was alone after I left government care, I ate at different places. Sometimes I ate sandwiches at home.”

You grinned, and he didn’t understand. “I just like to hear about the between times. Between the time you became an adult and then got drafted.”

“I don’t think I’m thirty yet, it isn’t as though there was very much time!” Hugo nudged your foot with his.

“What do you mean, you don’t know how old you are?” You tilted your head at him.

“I don’t. There’s no actual record of my birth. I was a doorstep baby, I just happened to be left at the doorstep of a really bad orphanage. No one bothered to draw up papers acknowledging my legal existence for years. The man who did it gave me his last name, but I never saw him again. I thought that it meant he was going to be my father, that I’d be leaving.” He set aside his empty bowl and made a face when he pulled a cigarette up to his mouth. “I don’t remember how I got the name Hugo, as a matter of fact. I was called Johan, Kid, Brat, Hermann, lots of things. Maybe I chose it.”

Like a flash, you were leaning over his lap. Your hands traveled up his sides as he blinked at you, surprised by your quick and unexpected movements. Such nice, gentle touch. It confused him a little, stirred things in his mind that he had to shake off manually. 

“Whenever I hear about those times,” you began, still with your hands tracing soft patterns along the skin of his ruined back, “I think of all the monsters you had to live beside and to conquer, and I’m proud.”

Hugo smiled, though he did not truly know how to receive such words. It was pervasively overwhelming to hear that he was loved at all, but your words had grown so much sweeter, so much more accepting and affectionate. He was still learning the trick to letting them be said and not dismissed. “I am proud of you, too.”

“I want you,” you said, playing with the hem of your sweater and smiling at him so prettily. “Want me, too?”

“Of fucking course I do.” His hands grew stiff and still, though, willing himself not to reach for you. “But are you  _sure_?”

“I’m not going to let them ruin me, baby.” You kissed his jaw, his chin, and his lips, your own hands already growing more suggestive. “I’m not theirs, I’m yours. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever let them take me from where I belong. Touch me,” you pulled his hands up to cover your breasts. “What do you feel? It belongs to  _you_.”

Hugo had you on your back against the cot, his eyes feasting on your wicked smiles, and he knew that he was making you happy. If he had to fuck you every hour of every day to see what was before him now, he’d find a way to do it. He helped to pull the sweater over your head up on his knees above you, then dove in. He was still fixated on your mouth, the clash of your lips together and every sound he could draw out of you. 

Nothing in this world felt better than when it was his name.

He ignored the fading purple blossoms on your neck, tried his best to kiss them better before he moved on, his whole body eager to be placed with yours. Urgency replaced eagerness. Your hands were holding his shoulder and the back of his head while he fumbled with his zipper.

“I love you,” you whispered up to his almost disbelieving eyes. “Everything you do, everything you’ve done, I love you. No matter who you were, who you are, who you will be, I love you.”

Hugo swallowed, his thumb poised just over your clit. “I don’t deserve that. Don’t say that.”

“You deserve whatever I say you do.” Your wicked grin returned, your hands traveled down his body, lip tucked between your teeth. “I said I love you, Stiglitz. You gonna argue with me?”

“ _Nein_ , Y/N.” He tried to focus his vision, to fix this picture in his eyes so that it would always be there. “I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never done it before.”

You kissed him again, his constant river of patience and understanding--and he almost panicked again, because he  _did not deserve this_.

“I haven’t either,” you whispered. “You’re the very first and very last I’ll be with like this.”

“I don’t want you to grow to regret me.”

“I never will.” You shook your head up at him, hair splaying out wildly. “Just do what feels right. Love me and do what feels right in loving me.”

The only thing that convinced him he was not in a dream was the distant drip.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: mentions of rape, actual rape, past child abuse, physical, psychological, and emotional torture.

Epigram from [Caitlyn Siehl](http://alonesomes.tumblr.com/): 

_“Start by pulling him out of the fire and_   
_hoping that he will forget the smell._   
_He was supposed to be an angel but they took him_   
_from that light and turned him into something hungry,_   
_something that forgets what his hands are for when they_   
_aren’t shaking.”_

 

 

**Day 119**

“I don’t think of myself as having a body.”

He finally had an answer, and Hugo understood now why you never wanted to answer this question before.

“If you don’t think of yourself as possessing a body, it doesn’t matter what other people do to it.”

The thoughts that tumbled through his mind made him frown, made him start to pick at his skin as if he could claw it all out. His feet began to tap rapidly on the ground, and you moved away from him.

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” you said to him. “It’s difficult to be hurt when you can’t feel hardly a thing. There’s no pain when there’s nothing at all.”

“That’s something that I am supposed to know, but you are not,” he snapped. He regretted it immediately, never wished to be impatient with you, but fingers were creeping beneath the surface of him, tugging at his arteries, closing all his bronchioles, and so badly he wanted them to leave again. His fist began to pound at the old wooden bench beside him, rhythmic and hard. “That will break inside of you, you know. It always does. Always.”

You blinked at him. “Did you just call my kettle black?”

“ _What_?”

“Nothing--”

The outdoor alarm buzzed, and the conversation was, at least for now, forgotten. Hugo pushed and pushed you until you went into the back corner of the room. Several persons were walking down the drippy corridor, and his current state of panic began to spike and stoke the ragged fire inside him. 

“Stiglitz,” Vogel called. “Back against the bars, hurry up.”

“Do you know what you’ve done to her?” he asked as his wrists were cuffed through and around the bars. Someone shackled his legs as well. He had learned that the more violent and uncooperative he was, the more they would hurt you, in such despicable ways. 

“Ms. Baker? Out of hiding. Come.” He walked right into the cell when it was unlocked for him, and Hugo thrashed unconsciously, growled. He was watching you walk right up to Vogel, stand before him. Vogel turned to him with a smirk. “Ms. Baker, will you explain to Stiglitz what we spoke about yesterday?”

“Vogel thinks that he can intimidate me into being his obedient little fuck servant--”

Your words were cut off with a nasty slap that made your feet unsteady. He caught you, however, and pulled your body in front of his. “What Ms. Baker means to say is that we have an arrangement.”

“No, I  _don’t_  mean to say that,” you said, ignoring the way his hands settled themselves intimately upon your person. “He’s going to fuck me, probably, so you should step out.”

“Oh, but he isn’t going anywhere, physically or mentally. He’s going to want to keep a very--careful--eye. . .” Vogel began to unbutton your shirt; your shoulders went slack. Hugo was losing his mind over there already, and you tried willing him to stop with your mind and your eyes. Vogel’s chapped, clammy hand reached inside, cupping one of your breasts and pulling it out.

The guards whistled and jeered. 

Vogel yanked on your hair so hard you felt like your scalp would rip open. “And you, you’ll be here this time, too. There’s no escape. I told you that. I warned you. There’s no place for you to run from me, my sweet little girl. What did I say to you when you chose to be naughty yesterday?”

“That everyone cares about something, even if they pretend not to.”

“And what did you say? Particularly when I asked you about Stiglitz, and I want you to say it clearly,  _enunciate_. I asked if you cared about him, what did you say?”

“Nope,” and you did enunciate, loudly and clearly. “Can’t fucking stand that goddamn rapist Hun pig.”

“I’m  _so_ proud of you, so very glad you chose honesty over that annoying little habit of lying to me.” Vogel pressed his lips against your neck, making sure to give Hugo full view. “And why, my little darling, would you rather  _that_  goddamn rapist Hun pig?”

“Better the devil you know, all that.” You shrugged. “You’ve had me in here with him for, what, almost four months? More than that? You weren’t fuckin’ worried about what he was doing.”

“Hugo,” Vogel addressed the man. “Is that how it  _really_ is?”

“Look at him,” you said, watching him twist and thrash and curse. His wrists were already bleeding at the metal cuffs. “How could it be any different?”

“Let’s find out.” 

You heard a click and felt cold metal touch your temple. Hugo immediately stilled, and Vogel laughed. 

“I think he likes you,” the Major said, tapping the gun’s muzzle against your head.

“What’s your angle, Vogel? What’s the point of all this? What do you want?” You closed your eyes so that you didn’t have to see Hugo’s expression anymore. That look, those eyes, they were going to haunt you for a long time, if you made it a long time.

“I think that you’re naturally quite submissive.”

“What? You have a gun to my head.”

“But I didn’t before. I didn’t yesterday, when I bent you over my desk and made you moan like a French whore.”

“The gun was implied.”

No one could hear you, though, you were sure, over Hugo’s complete and utter loss of control. His screaming, guttural curses, reverberated off the stone and metal that comprised this tiny hellscape. You started to cry, and hated yourself for it, because he wasn’t supposed to know. Now he did, knew that you’d been lying to him for a long time. 

Someone, you weren’t sure who, grabbed the back of Hugo’s head and slammed it hard against the iron bars. He was still trying to tear the damn thing down to get to Vogel when the major squeezed the trigger, resulting in another  _click_.

“Oh, my. She was lucky this time, Stiglitz.” Vogel held up his revolver, swung the cylinder out of place, spun the damn thing, and slid it back into position. “One bullet. I thought it would be more fun that way.” He placed the muzzle right against your head and dry-fired again.

You fell back against him, sliding down against his knees, coughing and wheezing. You couldn’t breathe.  _Twice_  in just seconds that crazy fuck had played Russian roulette with your brain. Vogel took you by the hair again and dragged you to where Hugo was cuffed, chained, and shackled to the iron bars that caged you both, day in, day out. 

“Do you think she’ll get lucky a third time?” Vogel had you kneel between them, and when he raised the gun again, you sobbed. Vogel tsked. “You were so strong just moments ago. Pity you’re just another little American bitch. A damnable liar, too.” He forced your head back so that you had to look up at Hugo. “Look at those man’s eyes. What a primal creature. Do you know what he forces you to do is some sort of animal manifestation of love is, to him? Look into his eyes. Do you see it? There.”

“He’s not a fucking animal,” you cried. “He’s just a person. He’s more human than you are, or any of your fucking lackeys.”

“So just a rapist Hun, now? Not a pig?” Vogel tapped the muzzle against your skull again. “You want to protect him. It would hurt him much worse than the words you said if he knew the whole truth about you. Do you know what I saw in him when he learned you spread those beautiful thighs for me?”

You grunted when you felt his hand reach up between your legs. You were shaking your head up to Hugo, but he was gone, pupils blown, his whole body primed to tear muscle from ligaments and break bones in half.

“I saw a traitor incensed that his little whore bride got off on another man’s cock.”

“You have  _never_  in your wildest dreams gotten me off.”

“Whatever you must say to yourself, my darling sweet.” Vogel pushed your face directly into Hugo’s groin. “Let’s see which one of us you can get off faster.”

“She’s not doing that,” Hugo hissed. 

Vogel laughed a little under his breath, then raised his gun to your head yet again. “I’m going to count to three, and his cock had better be in your mouth. One. . .”

With a look of apology, you dove in, just wanting it to be  _done_. Your jaw opened with a loud pop, something from an old injury you’d never bothered getting fixed, and Hugo gasped like all the breath had been torn from his lungs.

Behind you, Vogel laughed, pushing the skirt of your dress up to your waist and pulling the zipper on his pressed pants. “She’s excellent, isn’t she?”

Well, this was new, you thought miserably, unable to look at Hugo again. You wanted to bring him pleasure, tried your very best, even after being penetrated by another man. If you could get his mind off of it and Vogel could just pump his way through a pathetic, twelve second orgasm, it would be over. You couldn’t yet confront the deafening, degrading calls from the uniformed men standing mere feet away from you, nor the overwhelming sense of shame that beat down on you like a waterfall.

You tried only to think of the perfect person in front of you, of soothing his fractured mind, perhaps, by making him feel good, for a change.


	6. Chapter 6

The buzzer sounded, echoing its offensive wail down the corridor to your cell and bounced on the stones and mortar. You flattened your back against the wall and pressed your palms down onto your knees, eyes straight ahead. You counted three sets of footsteps and let relief wash over you. At least it wasn’t today. At the very least, it wouldn’t be today.

Erik and the other one with the acne scars were saying the usual disgraceful things about what they thought Hugo was doing to you when they left him alone with you. It turned your stomach, but there was nothing in it to gag. They shoved him, hard, into the iron bars before unlocking the cell and shoving him inside.

“Fick sie gut für uns.”

You hoped, prayed for him to keep quiet, this time, and, by mercy of God or whatever was out there, he looked enraged, but he kept his mouth shut. Once the outer doors slammed shut and you were alone, he scrambled for you.

“Are you okay?” he looked you over as best he could in the limited light, pushing your hair aside, shifting your clothes.

“It’s not me they wanted today,” you reminded him. A cut on his forehead was bleeding profusely. There would be more, much more, where you could not yet see. “What did they do?”

“I told you not to worry about what happens, it doesn’t matter. I’m not on a truck to Berlin yet. As long as I’m here and living, it doesn’t matter what else they do.” Satisfied that you were unperturbed and, for today, unviolated, he sat next to you on the creaky bench that lined the wall of the cell and closed you up in his arms. “I know you get upset when I say that. You know I’m not going to let you die in this place. You’re going to leave.”

You grabbed onto him as tightly as you could, so desperate your fingernails slid and sunk into his skin. “You are, too. It’s not an option. Don’t start again, I have to talk to you about that. You and me both are going to waltz out of this place with our guns held high, you know why?”

Not in the mood to argue, he stiffened all over and didn’t answer.

“Do you remember how long you’ve been here?” you asked.

“Two hundred forty-two days,” Hugo said. “You’ve been here–”

“One hundred fifty-two days.”

“Why hasn’t anyone come for you?”

“Probably no one knows. Probably I’m MIA, or KIA. Listen.” You wiped your eyes against his shirt. “This whole political prisoner thing, it’s no good for the baby.”

Now, his arms were just as tight. He was shaking his head. “No. No, don’t. Don’t say it.”

You hadn’t exactly expected enthusiasm, but a deep well of sadness swelled within your belly. “I love you.”

His voice was thin. “Don’t say that, either.”

“Hugo.”

“Don’t love me, please. Please tell me there’s not any baby. I have to keep you alive, Y/N, I have to–” he cut himself off, his fist landing on the bench with a thud.

“I’m pregnant,” you whispered.

“I’m sorry, fuck, fuck.” Hugo used his sleeve to dry his eyes and placed his forehead against yours. “I already knew I was going to fail at keeping you alive, but now I know I’m failing you and my baby, and I…”

“Well, at least you’re not questioning it.”

“Of course it’s mine! Even if it isn’t, it’s mine!” he snarled. “It’s mine.”

“Thank you,” you whispered. “I get told I’m a whore enough to go on feeling like one because…well, we don’t know. We have no way of knowing.”

“No, we  _do_  know,” Hugo said. His hand hovered just above your stomach, then landed, gentle touch. “Das ist mein Kind. Verstehen die mich?”

“English, Hugo,” you reminded him, your hand covering his. The only way you’d known for sure, after all of your suspicions, was the way your belly was just barely starting to harden and protrude. You pressed, wanting him to feel, too.

Instantly, his dread and fear and panic drained from his face. His eyes slowly grew bright, and then there was one of his purest smiles. “When I met you…” His voice was so breathless, with genuine joy. “I thought it would be the greatest thing, that my last days would be filled by you. I am not going to die, though, and you’ve given me a new life, and a baby, and I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, Y/N–”

You kissed him quickly and hugged him in your weakened arms. “It’s okay. It was shocking. It’s normal to be afraid at first. It’s going to be you, me, and this little baby, somewhere safe and far away. I hate to ruin it for you, but, specifically, safe and far away in America.”

“My little American baby, my sweet American wife.”

He sounded so sublimely happy, and the idea of being his wife didn’t bother you, anyway, you realised, so you simply nodded. “Yeah. We have something real to hope for now, and I know we can do it.”

“I will tear this place down, brick by brick, if I have to. What do we name it?”

“Ssh!” You grinned and covered his mouth. “Quiet, someone usually listens.”

“Can you blame me?” Hugo seemed to be speaking directly at your stomach. “Of all the wonderful things that you have given me…I never thought I’d be a father–no, a PAPA. I have so many things I want to teach her. Every word of Shakespeare, how to tie knots…”

“We have to be very, very careful. We can’t afford to piss them off anymore, but we have to be careful they don’t find out.

"You’re sure you’re okay?” Hugo asked quietly, his lips touching the back of your shoulder. “I’m not hurting you?”

“No, it’s really–you have to stop touching my stomach, your cock is inside of me.” You closed your eyes and leaned back against him, one of your hands gripping the cot firmly. “I think, I think there’s something about this whole–don’t stop, I’ll kill you–I just, I can feel it  _more_ , and I…”

He moved his hand down to your hip instead. “I love it when you feel good, and I love your little belly so much. I love it, there’s my  _baby_.”

“Hugo!” His insistence on this position, one you’d never even been in, before, had turned out to be a wonderful idea. It was warm, comfortable. It also made you feel lit up like a Christmas tree. The father of your child, as he referred to himself constantly, felt even more fantastically thick and full than usual. Your fingernails dug into his hand. You couldn’t make any more noise than you already had, but tried to convey with your hips how much you needed  _more_  of whatever he was doing.

When that proved successful, Hugo held his hand over your mouth delicately and moved faster. With a smirk, he leaned against your cheek and kissed you. “How can you be so fucking sexy when I can’t even see your face? I’ll keep you quiet, don’t worry…make all the sound you want.”

And it felt marvelous to be cared for  _that_  much. Someone else taking all the focus, taking all the effort, just to make it better for you. Hugo did everything for you, all the time, and he was always so kind…This one that they’d called a monster, whose name paved a road of fear in so many hearts…

You could only pray and wonder if you’d even still be with each other twelve hours from now, but for as long as you were, this was the man who’d be with you. The father of your baby. The hopeful little life you’d never planned on, never even wanted until it was  _there_.

One day, the full impact of everything he was doing for you would actually hit, would land inside your mind. One day, he would find out what you’d done for him, too.


	7. Chapter 7

It ended as quietly as it had begun. When he came back one day, showered, shaved, his hair cut, and wearing a fresh uniform, you knew that it was over, and so did he. Where you wept, Hugo was expressionless, save for a bit of his worry.

“I’ve been allowed to come back and retrieve my bible.” He walked past you to the pile of books and magazines and you could hear him picking something up, but…Hugo didn’t believe in God. There were bibles in the cell, left from long ago…

He stood before you now, tucking the small volume into his breast pocket. There were four guards waiting mere yards away, and he did not want to give them anything to ridicule, in this goodbye. He hugged you, kissed you briefly, and pushed hair out of your eyes. He exhaled sharply once, covered it up as a cough. “You should take comfort in the word of God. Deuteronomy, chapter thirty-two, verse thirty-five. In that way, we’ll meet again.”

And he was gone.

It took more than two days of crying, lamenting, and grieving for anyone to come to you again with more than mere food and water. No one touched you, thank heaven for small mercies, but you did hear, at length, of the cheers of all of Berlin, how safe every child felt at night, now that the traitor dog Hugo Stiglitz had been brought to justice before the world.

That night, delirious with lack of sleep and feeling so guilty for not properly caring for yourself and the little tadpole inside you, you rested on the cot you’d shared with Hugo for so long and picked up the bible that he hadn’t taken. Knowing nothing of its contents, you flipped around, looking for that page or something that he had mentioned, and a little scrap of paper slipped down gracefully to a stained portion of the cot.

Your breath caught, and you did not fully understand what you were seeing and reading until reaching the end.

> _I am a human being who is not a human being. I rip open myself and offer it to the world, but the world does not look. When you cannot be something that is beautiful, when you cannot be something that is good, you learn to look away from yourself, too, to stop begging the world for it to love you. When I did what I did in France, that was my suicide. I fully intended to die, suicide by authorities. I killed them, every one that they accused me of and more. I wish that I could say that I was purely trying to do something good, some last form of penance for my own life, but I am not good, and, although I chose my targets for who they were, what they represented, and what they had done, I killed them the way that I killed them because I am so angry. I am so angry of things that I will never understand. The world did not want me, so I grew angry, I grew violent. Hating others, I still sought my place. Finding none, I knew that I was nothing more than a failure of existence. I intended to die._
> 
> _Thank you for saving me. Thank you for filling my last days with the warmth and kindness I had always hoped would come to me, someday. I believe, in some way, my consciousness will go on after I have been executed, and it will always be thinking of you, aching for you. I love you and our child. Always._

It was all that was left of him, and he’d risked so much in just getting it to you. You pulled the sour sheet over yourself and mourned, mourned until you were too empty to do more than slip into an unconscious state.

When you awoke again, you lay on a different bed altogether, in a bright room, sterile and filled with the bitter, acrid stench of antiseptics. There was only one other person in the room with you, and, in his hands, he held a familiar scrap of paper.

“Ms. Baker,” Vogel began.

Something was not right, aside from the general danger of the situation. Something was not right, did not  _feel_  right.

“Do you  _know_  the verse, Deuteronomy 32:35? I believe Mr. Stiglitz told you that it would bring you some amount of comfort, before he was taken to meet his end.”

You shook your head, eyes locked with Vogel’s. Someone else entered the room, followed by a nurse, both wearing protective eyeglasses and masks, gloves, green clothing. You ignored them and tried to move your hands, but found they were bound. A tremble of panic rocked you.

Vogel gave an easy smile. “‘Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things to come hasten upon them.’”

You turned to look up at the figures that had grown close to you, but two sets of eyes gazed down at you, clinically, and a plastic cup placed over your nose and mouth. That was all that you knew.


	8. Chapter 8

Hugo Stiglitz was spared for nearly a week and a half after being taken away from you. They wanted, for some reason, to make him as clean a slate as possible. They fed him regularly so that he'd gain weight, they cut his hair, made sure his face was shaven, waited for all obvious signs of abuse and torture to disappear from his skin, like it were dirt. A new uniform was on his back, absent of any insignia or decoration, and he sat now in an outdoor cell, chained several times over. There were few guards. They were preparing his transport to Berlin now.

What had they told you, he wondered. Had they tortured you with his death already? What of the little life growing inside of you? His love for that forming creation was so great, he could hardly bear to think of it at all. In the back of his mind, he knew that you were to die before the child would be born, and in the front of his mind, this child that  _would_  be born, because you  _would_  escape or be rescued, he knew that he would never hold or know this child. This child would never know  _him_. Perhaps, regardless of the pain this thought brought to him, this was a good thing.

Hugo wondered and worried about you. How you were being treated. If you were eating enough, drinking enough, not only to support your own health, but the wellbeing of the precious dot of light growing inside you. The guard lit his cigarette through the bars and went to sit down again, picking up the newspaper he'd been reading. Hugo went back to the bench and sat down, too, his thoughts returning to you, the fact of your hair, what it looked like when he skirted his fingers through it, looking down at you, watching your eyelids, thin, as they closed. He slouched, reaching deeper into his thoughts, wanting to be lost in them, lost in you, rather than lost in the thoughts of his impending demise.

He'd only ever known you underground. He'd never seen your skin glow in the sunlight, but he'd known the brash laughter when he told an off-colour joke. He'd never known what you looked like in a floor-length dress, never see a ring he'd given you on your finger, never build the life you'd given him courage to dream of. He was consumed in these thoughts, still smoking that cigarette down to its last bits, when bullets and blood sprayed into the night's air, and that was over faster than he could summon a reaction.

"Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz?" It was a different sort of voice, some American accent that distorted the shape and sounds of his own name almost unrecognisably.

Hugo turned and looked at the taller, older man that it belonged to, nodded once, anticipation sharpening his bones. There were ten or so other men, dressed in dark clothes, holding heavy machine guns, rifles, standing near or over the bodies on the ground.

"We heard about you, you heard about us?" The leader of the outfit stepped close. "Lieutenant Aldo Raine. These're the Basterds."

"I have. Heard." Hugo could hear the roughness of his own voice. He'd never thought he'd speak again.

"Well, got to say, we're pretty damn big fans of yours, Stiglitz. We figured, long as we're nearby, why not see if this amateur Nazi killer wants to fucking go pro?" Aldo leaned against the iron bars. "Whaddaya say?"

"That's it?" Hugo asked after a moment, not truly believing rescue had come. It had to be some evil coincidence or a trick. "You bust me out, I kill Nazis for you, that's it?"

Aldo nodded and he noticed finally the gnarly scar that curled around the man's throat, like a hand, gripping tight. "Yeah, pretty much. Can't say it's a movie star glamorous sorta life, but, shit, what better options you got, son?"

He had trained himself so carefully over the years to never appear excited by anything. Exciting things were quickly taken away. "There's a girl here. One of yours."

"A girl?" Aldo put his arm up on the bars and looked up thoughtfully. "American girl? Hm. Seems fortuitous. Almost suspiciously coincidental."

"I was their prisoner," Hugo sneered. "I'm on my way to be executed, they've been holding me here for a year. I don't have a reason to lie to you about saving another life. I haven't seen her in a few weeks, but. . .she's still here. I'd know if they killed her or took her away."

"Where's she at, then?'

Now Hugo shook his head, tossed his cigarette. "Let me out, I'll go and get her. She won't be. . .She'll be scared. So many people showing up."

"Ah," Aldo nodded. "Got yourself a little American girlfriend while you's in prison. Ain't that nice?  _Donny_! Get those keys off that Kraut." One of the men dug around in a corpse's coat pocket, tossed Aldo the keys to the cell.

Hugo stepped out a free man. They were few steps, slow. He paused right outside the cell. He processed his freedom, but not for long. That part did not matter at all, his freedom was not what mattered. He held out his hand for the keys, felt his palm twitch a little when Aldo dropped them in unceremoniously.

"What's your girlfriend's name, Stiglitz?" Aldo called after him. No one made a move to follow. "Why's she here?"

Hugo looked over his shoulder, picked up a Luger off one of the bodies, just in case. "She got captured. Her name's Y/N Baker."

Aldo's face blanked with recognition, and then he grinned like the cat that caught the canary. "Fuckin' jackpot."


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Part I. Part II is soon to follow. More on my blog, warmommy.tumblr.com.

It was too surreal, and hauntingly real, all the same, walking down the cement steps leading to the underground. The Karabiner grasped tightly in his hand, its strap slack and perpendicular to the gritty ground beneath the soles of his boots. The door hissed, they had installed hydraulics, and the sound of the drip seized his heart in his chest. The buzzer, he finally saw its source, and he was walking past it, faster with every step. Every footfall felt sluggish, though, as though he walked on the bottom of a great lake, and the darkness, the dim, ethereal lighting, only made it seem more so. The closer he got to the cell that had for so long been his home, the cell he  _knew_  you still occupied, the closer he got to real freedom, the closer he got to drowning.

"Y/N?" His voice echoed, his chest heaved, feeling every bit as though he'd only just managed to find his away to the surface. You came into view with your body pressed against dark iron bars, long, pale fingers curling around them. You looked unwell and when your mouth open a sound emerged that he had difficulty understanding at first. Like a bark, but with no sharpness, no percussive trait. It seemed more an inhale, and  tears framed your reddened eyes. Hugo's fingers fumbled with the keys and there seemed a thousand lifetimes that were achingly hollow before the lock tumbled and he pulled the bars aside.

He was stronger than he'd ever been when he held you, before. You were crying, so weak, but he was strong, so he carried you. But not outside. Not past those hydraulic doors. No, not yet.

" _There's people, I don't know if you heard all that, I just wanted to warn you. Americans. They didn't seem to know about you. No, don't talk. It's all okay--it will be. I love you. I love you._  Why the hell am I speaking German?" Hugo laughed because it came to him, a funny thing to do, but you didn't mind.

He took you into the old shower room and tried to help you get undressed, but you stilled his hands, shaking your head. "Let me do this. You get clothes and food. I want out of here. Now."

Hugo kept his eyes on yours for several seconds, clearly unwilling, but able. It was what you wanted. It was what you needed. It would be faster, perhaps. Yes, getting out of here was so close. He scrambled to all of the places that you had speculated, together, for months, that food would be kept, where he knew at least some of the clothes came from, whenever they  _were_ given. Amazingly, your white dress was still there, the Traitor's Bride dress. Hugo touched its familiar boning and at once wanted to keep this precious thing and tear it into shreds. He heard the shower's spray cease and began to move much more quickly. He found a leather bag and loaded it with the apples and sandwich packs he found; mostly they were the reject piles from ration boxes, the sort that was thrown into the cell every now and then. Much as he his eyes and stomach and very fingers were disturbed by the sight, he grabbed them up anyway, put them into the leather satchel, and only just heard a foreign sound when his boot scraped the dusty ground. He stopped, and turned his head just slightly towards the noise.

Hugo Stiglitz knew all the sounds of this dungeon. He knew the sounds of the rats, the dripping pipes, the buzzer, could identify who was coming down the corridor by their footsteps. There was not a natural sound that occurred there that was not already catalogued into his mind, burned there, they would never leave him.

"Y/N, Liebling?" he called.

Vogel was literally backed into a corner, knees to his chest. Hugo stood his distance with a flare in his lip like a feral smile. It both puzzled and shocked him when you came up in the clothes he'd left for you and took his Luger, fired one round between Vogel's eyes, and that was it, he was gone. Hugo turned to you, stared, dumbfounded.

"We don't have time for that animal," you said quickly, fishing out packets of stale, dry crackers from the satchel. Your heart thumped a bruising pace behind your ribcage and you were only barely able to keep yourself from devolving then and there, but, as much as Vogel  _deserved_  to be tortured and executed properly for what he had  _done_ , his silence was more valuable. "We've kept the Americans waiting. I want out of here, Hugo, come on."

"Wait, just one second." Hugo pulled you close to himself, thicker and stronger than you'd ever felt him before. His hold was tight, but not punishing, just a desire for closeness. You could not see him, but heard the pained sob bubble up his throat. "Promise me we'll never spend a day apart again. Please. Please. Please, Y/N."

In your heart was exhaustion and a vague sense of empathy, swallowed by looming guilt, and love. He did not want to fall apart in front of the others; this must be resolved now. "I promise," you whispered, kissing his neck, his ear, his hair, everything that was in reach. "They literally can't take anything else, and now we make them pay. We leave this place in fire, just like we said, and they're gonna fear us, all of them. Every last one. They'll pay for what they did in terror, tears, and  _blood_."

Hugo nodded with all the characteristic of confidence and self-esteem he'd never quite had before, kissed you hard. "In a few months, this will all be done and we'll be holding our baby."

The one word had you pulling away, the guilt clawing up your gut, making ribbons out of ribbons. You looked towards the light escaping through the opened door, felt the gentle rush of  _wind_  on your cheeks, and took a deep breath as a sort of smile settled on your face. You walked, surefooted, ever closer to the exit, and saw the moon and stars from where you'd stopped. Oh, they had taken you into this place, this underground palace of rape and terrors, and they had unwittingly incubated a demon of darker urges than you'd had even before. You took each step up into the free world, birthed from havoc, and despair; the grim smile spread.

There was a man standing in waiting, older, and, as you grew closer, you saw a small cadre of men standing behind him, not wearing uniforms, but bearing heavy arms. You stepped up to their leader and heard Hugo behind you.

This first American you'd seen in many months, he had one of those noose scars, but you somehow discredited the idea that he'd tried to kill himself. It was something darker, more violent. He was looking you up and down, too, and stuck his hand out. "How d'ya do, Ms. Baker, pleased to meetcha. My name is Aldo Raine."

A soft flow of laughter erupted from you, and you took his hand, gripped it as hard as you could when you shook. "Fuckin' jackpot."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find this and a lot more at my tumblr, warmommy.tumblr.com!


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